Golfer's paradise

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Jebel Ali Hotel & Resorts Golf Course, Dubai, UAE.

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Abu Dhabi Golf Resort designed by Harradine.

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Boulder Hills Golf Course, Hyderabad, India.

The huge growth in the popularity of golf based real estate in the UAE presents unique challenges to course designers. Holly Sands meets golf course architect peter harradine to find out how it's done.

Ask any golf enthusiast what their dream job would be and it's guaranteed that being a course architect will be pretty high up the list.

Though as Peter Harradine, golf course architect for his family firm Harradine Golf could tell you, it's not all fun and games.

With a career in course design that started when he was still at school and projects around the world, Harradine has faced the challenge of adapting to some of the world's most diverse climatic conditions - from the Losone championship course in his home country of Switzerland, to Jebel Ali in the desert of Dubai, where he has spent the last 31 years of his life.

Surprisingly, though, according to Peter Harradine, the UAE is home to some of the most golf course friendly conditions around, despite the fact the golf courses there are built on sand.

In fact, he says, the UAE's environmental conditions make it easier to design and maintain golf courses there than in parts of Europe.

"People think that it's much more difficult to grow grass on sand than it is on clay. But given the constant warm season, it's extremely easy to grow and quite easy to maintain. Mainly because you know the climate is going to be more or less the same all year round."

"You control everything here, there are no variables. In Europe it rains one day, snows the next, then it rains for a week and is sunny all through the next. It is easier to work here, because the irrigation is automatically controlled".

He goes on to say that there are other upsides to designing a golf course in the desert due to the malleable terrain, allowing designers more freedom of creativity: "In terms of the structure, shifting sand is a lot easier than shifting rock. Most of the courses are sculpted out of sand, which is easier to shape apart from when it's very thin."

Naturally however, Harradine says that creating a golf course to withstand scorching summer temperatures places restrictions on the aesthetic aspects of a course: "We're limited with the species of trees that we can use, because there are some that you will never be able to grow in the region. That's why we can't use a lot of flowering shrubs here."

Even plants that can withstand the heat aren't guaranteed survival on the course, "The winds come up from the sea carrying a lot of salt and many of the plants scorch."

"Other times, the roots don't go down deep enough and stay very near the surface, so it doesn't take much wind to do away with the plant."

It's not just responding to the natural habitat and climate that poses a challenge to course architects, the next obstacle appears in the form of "Golf communities", according to Harradine.

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